The technique adopted has been described by Hasson and Giora 2006 and Gibbs and Boers Key findings In Donna Leon’s detective novels on investigations carried out by Commissario Brunnetti in Venice, military terms often refer to arguments between Commissario Brunnetti, his wife and his daughter Chiara. WAR metaphors carry the message:  opponents are ready to stand up for their values  they prefer face-to-face confrontations to behind the back intrigues. In ‘The Devil wears Prada’ by Lauren Weisberger, the fashion industry is shown as a predatory environment, where ‘stilettos’ warn a newcomer of a paranoid turnaround. The editor of the fashion magazine ‘Runway’, Miranda Priestly, is an aggressor who ‘invades’ the personal spaces of her subordinates, is an oppressor of ideas and suggestions and is a ‘soldier’ who serves the business around the clock. Miranda’s subordinates dream of killing her and often run WAR-like conversations. The main heroine of Fay Weldon’s ‘Worst Fears’ is a successful actress Alexandra Ludd who tries to reconcile herself to her late husband’ betrayal, and the hostilities of jealous neighbors and colleagues. Ironically consolation comes from the conceptualization of her situations in terms of the Napoleonic War in Russia. The motivation of her enemies is exposed and further strategy toward them such as ‘scorched earth’ is adopted. In ‘A short history of tractors in Ukrainian’ by Marina Lewycka, relations between family members undergo drastic changes. Sisters who did not talk to each other for years have been reconciled and old Nikolai has turned from being a tyrant to becoming a prey who needs protection. War metaphors refer to a) ‘oppressors’; b) domestic violence; c) hostile communication; d) aggression traded as WAR metaphors in contemporary English novels Lyudmyla a’Beckett Supervisor: Associate Professor Millicent Vladiv-Glover School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics Introduction For research purposes the following novels have been selected:  ‘Porterhouse Blue’ by Tom Sharpe  ‘A short history of tractors in Ukrainian’ by Marina Lewycka  ‘Worst fears’ by Fay Weldon  ‘Venetian Reckoning’ by Donna Leon  ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ by Lauren Weisberger Research questions  How WAR metaphors in contemporary English novels correlate with the samples ARGUMENT-IS -WAR provided by Lakoff and Johnson 1980:4?  What characters, objects and situations are depicted through WAR metaphors?  Do readers have a similar interpretation of the same metaphors? Do WAR metaphors have a fixed set of associations?  Do contemporary English writers have a pool of metaphoric resources available for use? Terminology Military or WAR metaphors are expressions related to war experiences such as ‘battles’ and ‘weapons’. In their secondary function these expressions often carry messages of hostile arguments, domestic conflicts, hyperbolic reactions and others. Examples:  There is a tug of war between the two women, my father in the middle, all the time protesting, “Murderer, murderer!” (Lewycka)  The war of silence is worse than the war of words (Lewycka) Method  Identification of ‘military’ words in texts that are not used in their primary function  Cataloguing instances of metaphoric conceptualization and finding underlying themes  Grouping various occurrences of WAR metaphors into thematically related strands. Experiment design 7 native speakers of English were asked to read M. Lewycka’s ‘A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian’. After that they were asked to answer 22 questions on defining topics and characters in the book, interpretation of text segments with dense metaphoricity, attribution of metaphors to episodes and characters, self-reporting tasks on the most memorable episodes, and topics raised. defense and protection. Stilettos become a symbol of female power and assertiveness. In’ Porterhouse Blue’ Tom Sharp describes a confrontation between the Master of a Cambridge College and Senior Fellows over School policy making. The subject of their debates is fluid but the ‘war’ is over only after the manslaughter of the Master. The dons celebrate their victory and enjoy full control over College matters. War metaphors define: a) the Master’s mind style in terms of maneuvers, and strategic thinking; b) the Dons’ mind style as belligerent defiance and mutiny; c) meetings of the Council as battles; d) sabotage justified by the guarding of traditions. Discussion and conclusion The various guises of the ARGUMENT-IS-WAR system are indeed common in different discourses and cultural settings. The linguistic resources serving this system go far beyond the pattern outlined by Lakoff and Johnson. Contrary to arguments by Koller 2004, WAR metaphors in novels do not construct a new hegemonic masculinity. They depict a range of conflicts and oppositions that can be initiated by both women and men. Some metaphors tend to re-occur in various texts. However, their interpretation is motivated by a range of text properties and the personal experience of readers. References Gibbs, R.,Boers, E Metaphoric Processing of Allegorical Poetry. In Maalej, Z. (ed.).’Metaphor, Cognition and Culture’, University of Manouba-Tunis:Tunis: 5-11 Hasson,U.., Giora, R Experimental Methods for Studying the Mental Representation of Language. In Gonzalez-Marquez, M., Mittleberg, I., Coulson, S., Spivey, M. (eds.) ‘Methods in Cognitive Linguistics’. John Benjamins: Amsterdam: Koller, V Metaphor and Gender in Business Media Discourse. Palgrave: New York Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M Metaphors We Leave By. University of Chicago Press: Chicago Acknowledgement: yahoo images for domestic violence, argument and stilettos have been used. My own picture of Kings College in Cambridge has been reproduced.